Through The Valley
by Spawn Guy
Summary: Hah,' he thought. 'What I need is a brick wall and what the Lord has sent me is a spider web.'


There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

---

"You believe in God? Luke says suddenly.

Logan and I look up from the pile of unconscious A.I.M goons, an even more so unconscious MODOK sprawled in the centre of the underground control room with his Hulk sized tongue lolling out.

"Tongue?" I say.

They look at me.

"Sorry! Sorry…I meant to say 'huh?', but I was looking at…" Helpless gesture to MODOK's tongue "…and…yeah."

"Uh huh."

Luke runs a hand over the almost perfect circle blasted into his shirt and I realise he's been doing it since we stopped fighting.

It began like most of these things do in our line of work: big freaking explosion. Punched right up through the pavement. Fortunately no casualties, but a hell of a lot of meetings in this part of the Financial District are going on hold thanks to a lot of nasty, inconvenient things like broken bones and third degree burns.

A.I.M's had trouble with Crossbones and Sin for the past couple of months, but apparently they have enough recourses left to try out for some metahuman help from the remaining Raft escapees. The F.B.I flagged an encrypted email from their representatives in Tacoma to Speed Freak and the Spot (Apparently meeting in dark alleys to swap briefcases isn't the trendy thing to do anymore) and sent it on to us because it'd be just too expensive for _them_ to deal with. This is indeed your tax dollars at work.

Tony's rooting around in their database and all he's figured out after the fire fight is they were up to something involving high speed vibrations and interdimensional travel. That was about an hour ago.

…And Luke and Logan are still looking at me.

"Eh, little from column A, little from column B…"

"Right."

Luke goes back to the hole and Logan heads off to…raid A.I.M's fridge or something. I know there's no way _he'll_ ask, so I'll go for it.

"Why? Thinking of trading in "Sweet Christmas!" for something a little more Yiddish?"

Luke scowls.

"Nah, just…" He checks over his shoulder, but Logan's vanished as scary people are won't to do. "They were using armour pierces. Not adamantaium, but I _felt_ 'em. Since we signed up at the tower we've gone up against a lot of crazies with a lot of power. A _lot_. 'An I got a kid on the way and everything."

I nod. I don't quite understand where this is going, and I don't think I'd like it if I did.

"I dunno, I just got to thinking what kinda world I'm brining my family into here. Most stuff I just walk through, bodyguard assignments, some moron pulling off a mugging. But then you get 'round to guys like the Wrecker, Magneto, Doom…hell, even Norman Osborn..."

I feel something cold deep in my throat. My face throbs with the half memory of still warm flesh dust and eyes too red and dry to cry anymore.

"And then I got to thinking 'Then what?'. All the questions I guess you'd expect to ask, I guess. I pissed off a lotta people back in the old days with Danny and now I got a bunch of guys it's practically mandatory for me to take on 'cause I'm one of the big guns now. I got a world to save, I signed up for Jess and the kid. 'An suppose it all…turns back on me? What if one of these guys comes looking for us one day…and settles for second best."

I nod again like an idiot. I know exactly what he's talking about, and I don't want to think about it but I can't make him shut up when he has to let this out.

"How can someone or something, Buda or Zeus or Thor…how can they give me all that and then give me a world fulla people that could take it all away?"

The control room is silent except for the dying gnat sound of traffic a few floors up through the still smoking hole in the roof. I'm beginning to see why Logan ran for it. How many times did he spend his nights squatting in a foxhole or whatever, or going at it with Victor Creed up in the mountains and ask himself some different, probably identical after a while, version of these questions?

Did it hurt when he stopped asking them?

I look up and realize I've been staring at the floor for a good three minutes. Nice. Your team mate goes ahead and opens up a little--a _lot _and you-

"Wait, what time is it?"

"Almost 6:30."

I slap my head into my hand.

"Luke…I…I gotta be at Midtown by 8:00…I'm…"

For a second I think Luke's reaching out a hand to crush my stupid little spider skull, but it's just to stop what I'm about to say.

"S' alright, man. Go earn a pay check."

I'm already out and crouched over the hole in the roof (now the street) before he's finished speaking.

"Thanks. Cool. And Luke?"

He looks up at me as I look back at him.

"My advice? Hold on."

---

I never told anyone this, not even…especially not Aunt May, but after Gwen's death, no, I didn't believe in God. I didn't _want_ to. Churches and superheroes only go together with funerals and for a whole hellish month the sight of the same cross from Gwen and George's graves jutting out of buildings was agony.

I'm older than I was then ( I feel it with every step I take and every punch I throw) and any relationship I have with God is about as okay as one between a hypothetical deity and a born scientist is going to get. I like to think as a scientist that all the dots will end up connected somehow. But sometimes thinking about the Great Beyond and all that still hurts and sometimes I don't want to think about it.

The fact I later end up having to save my afternoon science class field trip from a reanimated Egyptian mummy on loan to the National History Museum dosen't help.

"NYARGHHH!"

"I love you too, Skelator."

---

It dosen't get any better by lunch time. I spent half an hour cleaning up after that thing after it broke out and rampaged all over Lexington avenue, punched some jackass calling himself Dark Art extra hard in the nose for scaring the kids at the museum, and arrived about twenty minutes late for an assignment I negotiated last week at the Bugle for some extra cash (And I have the trademark bleeding ears courtesy of Jolly Jonah to show for it). I'd like to think he gave me Ben Urich's homicide in Central Park story more because no one else could get out there rather than a punishment, but JJ's tricky like that.

_Homicide_'s kind of too tame. Too civilized. But what the hell are you supposed to call five people suddenly dropping stone dead in broad daylight grinning like drunks at the Apollo on open mike night.

I hate jobs like this. There's only so many ways you can, or should be allowed to, take pictures of a dead body. I get antsy around these cases after a day of philosophising, because they're usually followed by some kind of…test of faith or something. Noted psychologist Dr. J.M DeMatteis wrote a paper in 1994 that analysed the nature of super human depression and the possibility that super powers somehow called near theological disasters into being right into the heart of heavily populated areas, usually foreshadowed by heavy rain, cold nights and rise in crimes such as serial killing and meta human escapes from Ravencroft. Pretty much launched his entire career. Figures none of us ever saw a cent

"What's wrong?"

And now it's three hours later and I'm sitting at the Daily Grind with Mary Jane, not actually watching the traffic go by instead of asking her how the casting for _Death Of A Salesman_ went.

"Nothing."

"That's code for 'Hey honey, dig deep until you find out what's actually bugging me'."

Nuts. Soul mate sense is tingling.

"I heard about the big explosion this morning. Everything go okay?"

"Luke and I got a little philosophical after it all."

Her hands on mine, a rush like marble made of putty. She knows whatever it is hurts and she can't bare it.

"Get philosophical with me, honey. You know you can."

I look back at her, feeling like an idiot because we had this conversation back when we first moved in together.

"MJ…honey…do you believe in…"

The explosion blows out windows for as far as Little Italy.

My Spider Sense had me and MJ under the table five seconds before the sound and the light reached us, two before the glass shattered

"Mary Jane…"

She kisses me. Hard. Like after that whole God awful week before Kraven Sr's suicide. She's been doing that a lot since I joined the Avengers.

"Go get 'em, Tiger."

The feel of her lips stays with me long after I'm in the air and away from the alley behind the diner.

Now I haven't been an Avenger long, but I'm pretty sure general policy for big time cosmic cases should be Head For The Giant Glowing Column Of Light Coming Out Of The Ground Up Ahead.

_//See the giant glowing column of light coming out of the ground up ahead?//_

Tony levels off to fly alongside me.

"Yeah, boss?"

_//Head for it.//_

"Yeah, boss."

Below us a greyhound and a car are about to collide. Tony's already shouting instructions as he dives down, only a second behind me. I take the cab, reaching through the open window to web yank the wheel to the left, pulling us up onto the sidewalk. The blitzkrieg of Spanish cursing stops as the wall of metal blurs past. Terrified faces stare out at us behind grimy glass, Tony hanging on for dear life from the rear, boots carving jagged furrows into the road. Screaming crowds hurl themselves behind cars and into alleys as the greyhound rocks to a halt.

Tony already has his hand pressed to his helmet as I land in front of him, and in my belt the un-inserted Avengers comm link starts buzzing.

_//Cap's already got the rest of the team en route. Even Wolverine and a bunch of X-teams. Wong's trying to call about Dr. Strange finding something…hold on, emergency frequencies are going nuts…//_

"Gee, wonder why."

_//Ah…//_

Tony's eyes look nervous and watery through the eye slits.

_//That was Lindsey. Bob's already there.//_

I glance over my shoulder at the fading column.

"Yeah, the golden glow like the power of a million exploding suns was kinda hard to miss."

The glow of the Sentry's aura subsides as we reach him, revealing the anti climactic sight of Bob leaning over the edge of the crater like a five year old trying to figure out which part of the u-bend his goldfish is in. A large number of cars have crashed together around it and I freeze up as I recognize the gins of the too still bodies behind the glass.

_//Spidey.//_

"Sorry boss, just…"

Tony stopped listening the second I restarted jogging behind him.

_//Sentry! Any idea what's happened here?//_

"Beyond those poor people dropping dead Iron Man…no. At first I thought it was a portal to another dimension but it dosen't look like any energy pattern I've ever encountered. Perhaps you can find something in your files, but right now I'd have to say this Avenger's stumped."

Yeah…we're dealing with the Sentry now.

"Anybody got Reed Richards on speed dial? I left my phone back with my civvies."

Spider Sense, bad timing, call it what you will, but before I've finished breathing the column suddenly smashes out of existence. It wouldn't be particularly comforting if it had vanished with no trace. It's just damned creepy to leave a pulsating light like at the bottom of a volcano.

"Um." Bob says, and then has to cover his eyes like the rest of us mere meta-mortals, as whatever it is levitates out of the still glowing crater.

At first I thought it was the Silver Surfer, but the closer it gets the more obvious it's not. For starters the Surfer isn't an apparently near naked woman made out of dancing glass and revolving light patterns with water for hair. And, as far as I know, the Surfer never smiled. It's a polite full lipped smile, the kind your oblivious secret crush in high school would give you. And frozen there like that, it's nad shrivellingly terrifying.

"Hello. I am Whorlogogog."

Tony's already in that manga 'put up yer dukes' stance you see all the big time superheroes pull on the cover of TIME. Bob and me look downright unprofessional. He puts his hands on his hips in that old Action Comics Superman pose, striding forward and thrusting out a finger.

"Now look here, friend…"

Whorlogogog gently takes his hands, finger and all, and clasps both of them together in her own, grinning like he just proposed. I think Tony and Me both yelled out Bob's name as an explosion of gold roars out of him, but I'm too busy covering my eyes to check. His body's still quivering as he crashes to the ground, throwing up that cloud of dust you only get when a fully grown human body goes totally limp. Whorlogogog shakes, shivers and blurs before righting herself. The ground throbs gold for a second, and her eyes (if that's what they are) following the fading trails that dart right under my boots, all the way up my legs and my face. The smile returns.

"Let me help you."

A barrage of repulsor blasts flex and evaporate off her shimmering skin, diving right back to the source as crackling thunder bolts. Tony's chest sparks and he goes hurtling through the air with a trail of sparks and what sounds like a scream. I hope that's the armour and not…

Ah. Me against her. Spider against the sun.

"Let me help you." She says again, floating forward, reaching out with one of those terrifyingly perfect hands.

I hop about, oh, thirty feet back.

"Nuh-uh gorgeous, not on the first date!"

She smiles at me as she steps over Bob's body, then has another spasm. I don't bother to question anything and pour on the webbing. Naturally it evaporates before it even reaches her.

"Uh, just checking but if I said something like 'I am now officially out of ideas' would that make the following any less painful? No? Okay."

She has another spasm and over the death keel of my Spider-Sense I feel her fall apart, clinging to the air somehow. I'm still blinking back the dots after the multiple TV screens and radios turn themselves on. A blast of perfect white noise shrieks down the back of my spine, leaving my nerves white hot as I hobble over to help Bob up. Every skyscraper in Midtown spasms with light and her face smiles out of every window pane like God's own JumboTron.

"_Hello people of Earth 616. I am Whorlogogog. I am here to help you. I shall make you all better. I have been dispersed into the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum for the moment. This is only a temporary delay. I shall recollect my molecules and particles soon and then I shall make you better."_

By the time the cops have sealed off the block, about ten riots, fifteen fires and twenty suicides have already happened within the first five minutes.

---

"Okay…"

Tony removes the ice pack from his un-helmeted head. He still looks like hell.

Poor choice of words. Even up here in the Baxter Building we can hear the panic on the streets below.

"I just finished cross-referencing what I grabbed from that thing's systems with Dr. Strange's findings. I managed to give him a name, he did us one better and got a home address."

The armour chest plate rises eerily from the pile of components in the corner, tilting up right to let a beam of light project out from the centre generator, creating a revolving image of whatever the hell that thing was. Streams of data and wasteland images cascade behind it like a waterfall.

"Ladies and gentlemen, meet Epsilonsigma Qudrofiniety of dimension three thousand cubed. One of the few nine million alternate dimensions not in our own Reed Richard's records. Our dimension wasn't so lucky; we were next in line for examination on the data banks of an alternate Richard's patented satellite for extra dimensional observation in our visitors home dimension."

I don't have to look at everyone around me to tell we're all wearing exactly the same expression. The whole of the Fantastic Four, Me, Tony and Cap, She-Hulk (so _really_ all of the Fantastic Four) Cyclops, Wolverine and Yellow Jacket sit around the FF's conference table watching an interdimensional slide show revolve around and around in front of us. Even though half the people in this room are only here because they're the only one's that could break away from helping out with the evacuation, I still feel like I don't belong here. It's too shiny. I'm a back alley, dirty rooftop kinda guy.

Tony gestures and a devastated, ash coloured plane swims into existence. A turd colored bunker squats in the centre.

"She…that's the closest term we have for it…was born in China in the year 2099 as a one millionth generation off shoot of her reality's Project Rebirth."

We all try to pretend Steve dosen't tense up.

"Her official name at the time was Warbreaker. There's an entire history of non aggressive tactics in these databanks Strange found. Looks like they were trying to put together some kind of anti-war weapon to totally eradicate any and all forms of aggression. Heavy stuff."

Yeah, Strange is magically e-mailing Tony of all this from this other reality to the Extremis. I don't know what's more amazing, the fact these two guys are performing the first cross realities IM chat, or that Strange knows how to use e-mail.

"For the first five years it wasn't so bad. Then they got around to analysing mutant psychics, holy relics and the Power Cosmic."

Hank raises an eyebrow. Yeah, you can kind of see how this kind of thing could go wrong if the government, _a_ government, had access to that kind alien mojo juice. Tony frowns as the information on screen picks up speed.

"It gets jumbled from there, but at some point one of the project administrators decided what they really needed was something that dedicated itself to the total eradication of man's inhumanity to man and whatever came after. Nirvana in a bottle. Then he gave it sentience and she took over. She didn't alter too much of her initial programming, except now her sole reason for being was to alter the very fabric of reality to make every second of everyone's lives simply heavenly and lovely and super…which to a sane person means kill most of an entire generation through over positive stimulation, and kill of the rest of the species by practicing how to breed them into nothing more than walking pheromones and leaving horrifically mutilated, but simply overjoyed, survivors wondering around what was left of the Amazon."

"So we're dealing with the anti-AM?"

Why does that make me even more nervous?

"With what Strange said this thing did to it's home dimension…entirely possible."

Cap leans forward.

"And the survivors of that dimension? What happened to them?"

The world is made up of computer bank humming and sirens a good ten blocks away for a too long five minutes.

"They died." Tony says at last. He inhales as if he's trying to remind himself how to. His eyes glisten, either with the Extremis or…fear. "They died. Clustered around her above ground substation, either from exposure or malnutrition. They died in ecstasy, grinning like idiots. Stephen says their pleasure centres made up thirty per cent of their brains."

Those bodies in Time's Square make a sudden nauseating sense.

"But…that's after a few generations raised under this thing, surely?"

My voice sounds hollow through the mask, and I pray that's the only reason they're looking at me like that.

"That should become the norm, right? But those bodies S.H.I.E.L.D took in had been dead for only thirty minutes…are we saying this thing can--"

"We don't know anything about what this thing can do." Tony puts in.

"It's a valid point." Reed admits. "What we have tells us this thing developed the ability to play with the physiological and psychological make up of an entire species to the point they died out, but instantly altering a perfectly uncontaminated species is worrying."

"Totally uncontaminated?" Hank interjects. "What about the Beyonder or that entire infinity gauntlet fiasco? Or how about your common garden variety X factor or previous telepathic exposure?"

"What if the reality we're talking about here isn't the one she came from?" The idea I'm having right now makes me want to throw up right here in my mask. "If she made her way here through some kind of wormhole, then what if she had time to practice in that particular dimension? Or the one before it. After finishing in one reality she moves onto the next, and the next and the next, etc."

Reed and Hank stare at each other and then at Tony as he hunches over his holo-screens, touching sections of them like keys.

"I follow Peter's line of thinking, but Hank's given me an idea…"

"Who's Peter?" Cyclops and She-Hulk ask simultaneously.

"Never heard of him." I say through my teeth. Logan's smiling and Tony dosen't need the bill for anymore bullet proof windows.

"Okay, okay." Tony enlarges one of the displays, then splits it in two. I blink at the bespectacled faces smiling back at me. One is a faded image of a guy in a bowtie and tux. The other is…is better than high def…and I've seen that fashion sense before…

Logan leans forward, frowning.

"Didn't I punch that guy this morning?"

Tony enlarges the left hand holo-screens. "Meet Professor Jonathan Kenneth Sainthertz. This is his 1974 high school graduation photo, taken long before a string of failed business endeavours forced him to take his expertise in vibrational mechanics to A.I.M. His wife Rachel divorced him and died a year ago in a car accidence. He _was_ present at the raid this morning, and among the many interesting and illegal designs I found on their database was an incomplete version of the incorrect notes a young Victor Von Doom made while attending E.S.U."

Now it's Reed's turn to tense up. Tony drags the other image over, superimposing the two over one another. Totally identical face, different background.

"This is High Technomancer Jonathan Kenneth Sainthertz from a file photo in the other reality's database."

Something clicks. I remember that style of shirt collar. She-Hulk beats me to it.

"He had something to do with the project back in their 2099? The one who turned it in the theological direction?"

Tony points and cocks a finger at her.

"Great government record but lost his son in some kind of accident in a futuristic California. Now here's the freaky part."

I have to say it.

"An all powerful god like A.I from an alternate reality _wasn't_ freaky?"

"You should come to the mansion Christmas party." Cyclops says dryly.

Tony drags a third screen out from the joined images. It's a S.H.I.E.L.D morgue file. Of Sainthertz. Our Sainthertz. The grin is much wider and far more forced.

"This was taken three hours ago after the hullabaloo-please stop laughing Johnny-in Time's Square. We do a background check on the other corpses they brought in…" He makes a sweeping motion and photos of the corpses from Central Park and Time's Square trail out, forming a complete row of twenty five images in total. "Dig a little more, and one of these things are definitely, almost exactly like the other. They're all almost totally biologically related. Direct family or related through marriage, the connection is there."

"Good God." Hank mumbles, like he's catching on.

"Gee, thanks, I just ate." Ben mutters.

"I don't think it's an infection. I think she's trying to retrace her footsteps using a familiar genetic template. She starts on the Sainthertz family tree and goes through all the relatives, then finally branches out. It lets her get a foot hold on most of the human race as she keeps going through grandparents, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, kids, _their_ husbands and kids…"

"Then shouldn't half of us be dead from her psych touch by now?" Cyclops asks.

"I think Bob's aura screwed her up somehow. That stunt on TV was a stall tactic."

"How is the little nut anyway?" Ben rumbles.

"Recovering back at the watchtower. He's in Cloc's hands now until we figure out how to get him back in action."

"Speaking of which--" Cap's about to stand up, but Hank and I interrupt each other. I let him go first since as one of the countries leading scientists his idea is probably more important.

"If this is the theory we're going with, aren't we depending on everyone in the city being related to each other?"

"Taking the long view, yes," Tony replies as the images shuffle like transparent cards ",but check out the date and ages of each family relative in specific locations."

He trails along each photo, organized in two different rows. One starts with the grandparents through to the kids, the other is the reverse.

"Age." Reed mumbles. "She's trying to work her way back to basics, get at the common genetic factors to effect just them and produce the desired effect for the entire species."

I'm going to be sick, I'm going to be sick, Imagon_nabe__SICK_

Tony strokes his chin.

"I think we may have something there. If Bob's anything to go by she'll simply stun us as apposed to kill us. We can get some of the Sentry level reservists to keep her busy for a while before we try and throw her into the Negative Zone, or force her back to her own reality and trap her there."

"We've got a plan then." Cap says, standing up. "Tony, Reed, let's get to Hill and try and cut this thing off at the pass. Logan, Cyclops, anyone you can spare is more than welcome to help with the assault team but I want your telepaths helping out with crowd control. Everyone else, keep doing what your doing for the city. Don't worry about any solo heroes, these things organize themselves."

He slips his shield onto his back, tightening the straps as the rest of us stand up.

I can't be sick.

But God, I want to be.

"I'm sending Franklin and Val to Crystal." Sue says. She and Reed embrace, kiss and part. I burn suddenly, desperately missing MJ. Never mind that she and Aunt May got out on the 2nd wave before they closed the bridges, if this is as globally dangerous as the big guys think it is, I need to call her. Maybe for the last time. Avenger or not, I'm still human, still a little boy from Forest Hills and I think the only reason I haven't thrown up is because I haven't eaten anything since that bagel at lunch.

I mumble my excuses as we make our way out into the hall, pulling my cell phone out of my utility belt.

"MJ?"

"_The number you have dialled is not in service. Please hang up and try again later or select operator for more options."_

Crap. Johnny slips up to me, holding out a hand.

"Ready to rock?"

My legs are going to collapse like empty balloons, but I grasp my best friends hand tightly.

"Name the time and place, flame brain."

"Peter?" Cap says behind me, almost making me jump clean out of my costume. "Can we talk?"

I let him take me aside, spotting Tony and Reed standing a little further up the hall, close to the roof exit. I get the terrible impression I'm holding everybody up.

"Peter, I know you've had some doubts about your capabilities since joining the team and I want to assure you that's normal. Even Clint, brash as he was, felt like he couldn't measure up occasionally. But when it came time to face something so insanely out of this world that even Thor was worried he charged in along with the rest of us. He saved the people who needed it and gave it everything he had against Kang, Thanos and Michael Korvac. But he was still thrown by it. We all were. You deserve to know that."

He puts a hand on my shoulder. You never forget it when Captain America does that. It's like Jesus asking you to wait for him at Gethsemane.

"You also deserve to know that on something this big not even the invincible are safe. You'll be keeping to the streets while we lead in every big gun we have to try and hold this thing back, but we might not. And if even if we can you won't be safe out there. You're not like most of us. You have other responsibilities. So if you say the word, one phone call and I'll have you out with May and Mary Jane. You deserve all of that. We will bare you no grudge."

His grip tightens and I suddenly remember that they fell asleep before Jesus returned.

"But if you do stay out there, I want your best. Even knowing what you know. Because if you do, the people still out there deserve that from you. No doubts. You _are_ an Avenger. It's about what you want here. Because I know whatever you do choose you'll measure up to the responsibility. No doubts."

I'm about to answer…try and answer…

And then I see the smoke coming from the fires, visible through the window on the other side of the city.

"Let's go."

---

The air is full of mini-carriers. For supposed prototypes of miniature, even more mobile helicarriers there are a hell of a lot of them. The traffics been backed up for hours now except for a ten mile radius Maria Hill set up around the outer reaches of the containment area, and they've cancelled the ferries out to Ellis and Staten island. Any and all tourists are stuck out there, and probably a lot more safer than everybody other than the people in the next state by now. The air lifting's been going good so far and the police seem to be handling everything in the other burros.

I hop over the expansive roof of the Roxxon building, springboard off a radio antenna and end up crouched on the side of a building that gives me a view over the section of Manhattan they've cordoned off. A cobalt blue force field dome shimmers over a large area that covers everything between Times Square and the financial district, costing the city a fortune every second. At first it wasn't going to be too bad, and then S.H.I.E.L.D helpfully declared this a potential Extinction Level Threat, meaning we may be looking at quadruple the body count of the holocaust, Hiroshima and the entirety of Cletus Cassidy's career. Meaning the taxes of a certain little web slinger and petty much everyone living outside that containment area had to sky rocket to help maintain that containment area.

I shouldn't be too mad though, it's working. The FF and Dr. Strange are in there, running interference and observation on this thing. I saw a streak of fire that just had to be Johnny last time I passed by, and the odd golden blast flashes inside every once in a while. Cap and Tony are waiting in the wings with a squad of top tier Avengers reserves alongside a heavily armed S.H.I.E.L.D squad, just in case, leaving the rest of us to run clean up duty with the emergency teams. Rioting is still going on out there after all. Case in point; a bunch of looters dressed like something out of a bad 80's music video are breaking into the electronics store on the partially deserted street below me.

I summersault in through the busted door, kicking the leader in the head and springing back to watch him collapse under the weight of the massive plasma screen he's carrying.

"Haven't you guys heard? At half price off our two for one special, these things are a steal all on they're own!"

Looters. Guh. It's just--I hate looters. Hate, hate, hate.

Upstanding member of humanity number 2 (I call him Harvey for short), comes at me with a switchblade while Harvey number 3 screams, wets himself and passes out right there in the store. I grab number 2's wrist and bring both knees up into his face, tossing him into a rack of outdated gizmos as I land. He makes a not noise as an honest to God Walkman bounces off his temple and goes still. I look up as Harvey number 4 cocks a gun at the head of the elderly Jewish guy running the place.

"Back off man! Back off or I swear to God--"

"You union, pal? If not I'm going to have to ask for some I.D. See, I've gotta know how much of a beating I've got to give you, and if you're non-union I won't know how hard or how much I've gotta hit you."

He hesitates and that gives me just enough time to fire a big dollop of webbing all over his gun and lasso his right ankle with a smaller line from my left shooter. I yank both in opposite directions and send him spinning face first into the floor. I step gingerly over his gun hand to help the owner up.

"Good afternoon, sir. I'm Spidey and I'll be your friendly neighbourhood superhero for today…"

He waves me off.

"Could ya have made anymore of a mess in here, Mr big shot? Look at my place. Harry and the boys just got it all nice and clean."

Ah, the priorities of the average New Yorker.

"I believe the words you're looking for are 'Thank you' but you'll have plenty of time to think about exactly what you want to say once you're on board a nice comfy NYPD helicopter about five blocks that-a-way."

"Just gimme five minutes to lock up. An' tell alla your Fantastic X Buddies not to bust the place up too much. Some of us gotta work for a living."

I think that's about as close to a thank you as I'm going to get, so I take off, swinging uptown to check the rest of the block. It's actually getting pretty quiet up here apart from the occasional police cruiser going by, and I'm wondering if I should check out the meat packing district and try to do something useful when I hear the shot. I double back a couple of roofs and come down on the sidewalk just in time to see some crazy eyed moron hurl a startled cop out of his car and scramble in, taking off at about 80 in five seconds.

Cop just got carjacked. Huh.

I'm torn between going after him and taking care of the cop, but he's not going to get far. A crimson streak swan dives off a fire escape and crashes down onto the front of the car before somersaulting off and leaving Mr crazy face to smash into a street light. He staggers out the passenger side waving his gun like an angry finger and Daredevil slaps it out of his hand, grabs it, and pistol whips him with it before dragging his unconscious ass over here.

"Red." I greet.

"Red." He replies.

I crouch down beside the cop as Matt unceremoniously drops the perp's head on the curve.

"Crazy moron damn near shot me!"

"Yeah, that happens. You need anything or…"

"Nah, nah. How's my car?"

"Been better." Matt says, sheathing his billyclub as the line snaps back into place.

The cop waves me off as I help him up.

"Can you walk okay? There's a hospital a few blocks from here, and they're bussing people out…"

"Just don't try to blow up the city." The cop says, striding off. And then it's just me and Matt and the empty car, the odd passer by trying to ignore our existence and follow the dully appointed authority.

"That's the second guy in about three seconds to say that to me."

"Mmm."

Matt's not looking at me. He dosen't have to but that's not the point. He's staring out at the horizon, looking somewhere, listening at it intently until he finds whatever it is

"I've got to go."

If things are bad enough here, then in a minefield like the Kitchen…

"Hey, wait up!"

---

As it turns out, we never make it there.

Later we'll find out one of the pilots had a somehow undiagnosed case of epilepsy which was induced by one of the flashes inside the dome, and that mini carrier model A-010015 had an intake problem in the left propulsion unit and it's yoke had a tendency to bank to the right against the pilot's will. All we know right now is ten tons of aerodynamic steel suddenly carves a shattered lightning bolt scar across the side of a building before the left hand side of the thing snaps into flames. The front crashes into the ledge of a department store, crushing the cockpit and sending the entire thing screaming around and across the roofs with the sound of ten tons of steel not being so aerodynamic. Chimneys and roof exits vanish in thunderclapping sandstorms before the thing pitches over the edge of building. I pray the web net holds.

Matt dives out of the arc of his swing, landing on the roof. I can hear the straining as the carrier inevitably pulls small pieces of steel and rubble out of the nets grasp. It's like a saw through my brain from up here, but Matt just keeps going, forcing the doors open with his Billy club and flinching at the sparks and protesting pneumatics.

I scamper up beside him and take in the four people huddled inside.

"And for my next trick I'm go_CHRIST_!!!"

My brain becomes a…I don't want to know what it is right now as my Spider Sense howls straight through my head. It's like the entire city stampeding through my brain, superimposing it's molecular structure in fingernail scratches all the way down my body, every spec, every detail. The dome LOOMS into my frontal lobe and I know what's going to happen even as I turn. See it spark. See it buckle. See the waves of energy tearing through the air towards us.

"Oh crap…"

I don't remember how we managed to get everyone out of their seats in those five seconds before the wave hit the side of the building. I remember falling, the kid in my arms. The sudden complete absence of the ledge under me. The frustration that I didn't realise this until I was falling. I remember Matt, a red smudge against the sky, diving to catch the girl and the guy. I see the guy doing…I don't remember.

Somehow we make it to the street without breaking our spines, but that's no use because the streets tearing up under a tidal wave of lightning storms. I've lost sight of Matt and I'm too busy trying to stay airborne and avoid being electrocuted to look. Above us the ship punches through the web net and plunges towards us, sparking along with a million shards of skyscraper glass. I get a brief impression of a subway entrance and then we're soaring up and then going down. I don't know how long we fall but we do. I only realise we've stopped when all the sound dies away.

I stagger up, trying to get some night vision. It's difficult because I don't know if I'm actually standing up. How far did we fall? How did we survive?

The world strips back slightly, allowing me to separate the dank from the dark. Apart from some tender ribs I think I'm okay, and I owe those to the kid so hopefully he'll have less trouble getting up than I will.

"Hey champ, you okay?"

"Y-yeah…"

I give his hand a reassuring squeeze as I help him up. His backpacks broken open and I web it up for him as we gather his various chipped and soggy things. Candy bars, a fuzzy ball, couple of comic books…

I've seen a couple of these things with the kids at Midtown. The kind that go missing a few days after people start asking what's wrong. Which probably doesn't get noticed. At all.

"Anyone left?"

"Nobody we can do anything for." Matt says. I try not to think about what that means. I pass the bag back to the kid, hesitating when I feel my thumb running over a shaped bump. A small plaque sown into the side. A name tag. B-I-L…

"Billy? Is that your name?"

"Yeah?"

"Nice to meet you Billy. I'm Spidey."

He giggles in the dark. He can't be more than ten, maybe a year or so less. What the hell is he doing down here with two superheroes and a god on the rampage?

"So Billy, your, uh, parents know where you are? Those two in the-" I hesitate, realising the carrier's driven clean through the ceiling of wherever we landed. The smell of burnt rubber and gasoline fights for attention with the smell of old pipes and wet stone. It's rammed nose first into the mud (I'm really hoping it's mud) It's a wall of metal encouraging sanitation workers everywhere to abandon hope. Not that they could enter here if they wanted to, there's a wall in front of us and this things blocking what's presumably our exit. We must be in the maintenance tunnels under the subway or something. That explains the smell, doesn't justify it.

"Uh…yeah, those two in the…thing…were those your parents? Do they know where you are?"

"My parents don't live together anymore."

I realise the implications of that and let it go.

"He was trying to choke her for God's sake!"

"Up yours!"

Remember when all that was really complicate about the world was the crazy demigod from another dimension? I miss that. At first I don't recognise the other guy wrestling with the other guy who looks like he's part goat. Looks decent enough, nice suit, probably blonde hair. Probably I really hope it's the light making it that shade of particular suspicious shade of brown. I remember now, he pushed Matt down into the subway when we landed. Probably saved his life.

"He tried to choke her! In mid air! I saw him!"

"Jez helpin' her up pretty boy but if you don' shut up I'm gonna put you down!"

Dialogue's cheesy as hell but if you didn't have Spider powers you wouldn't be laughing if you looked at him right now. Hell, I've got Spider powers and I don't feel like laughing. In the dark his eyes and bared teeth are too wet, too shiny. He looks like an animal. Like Logan. No…like Sabertooth. I turn to Matt.

"They're…both right." Matt says slowly.

"'Ey pal…"

I step between both, separating them, arms outstretched and legs apart. Hey, it always…okay, _kinda_ works for Cap whenever Luke and Logan try to see what's better, unbreakable skin or adamantaium claws. And yeah, I know adamantaium is pretty much the only thing that can hurt Luke, but he could…I dunno…step on Logan. Or something.

"Easy kids. Don't make me give you a time out down here. The corner's probably half a mile under water."

I hear Billy snicker in the background and I wonder if Matt's radar picks up the sound of my heart rising a little.

"Names." He commands. "Now."

Goat guy backs down begrudgingly, scratching at his beard.

"Jeff McCulloch. I'm an odd job man ye might say. Carpenterin', drillin', leaden' an' that. I done these tunnels a couple of times."

"Calvin." College Boy says nervously. "Just, uh, just Calvin."

He's looking nervously at Matt. Hey, not everyday you save a superhero's life and all.

"And you ma'am?"

"Her names Tracy."

Matt's glaring at her. But the mask is supposed to glare at everyone. The crease between the eyes means it's serious.

"She's one of Drake Corvette's girls."

"Not anymore, jackass."

"Aye, and many a man's happy about that…" I really don't like Jeff's grin.

"Shut up Jeff." She pulls her jacket tighter around herself. Before you get any ideas, she's wearing the same amount of clothing you would. Maybe she'd turn a few heads on the street but looking at her right now, without the ice, you'd never know. That's what makes it so…difficult. Drake Corvette wasn't a pimp. Pimps like to think they keep better company than Drake Corvette.

"Was he trying to choke you?" Matt tries softly. I've heard him use that kind of voice to certain clients.

"Nah." She looks at Jeff as if she's something she found at the back of her fridge. "He just got a little friendlier now that he figures he doesn't have to pay for anything. In front of the kid even."

There's an indignant sputter in the darkness. I raise my voice over it.

"Well, after the incredible amount of time wasted learning all your names I figure it's time to get back to the surface so we can all forget about each other as quickly as possible."

Assuming Whorlogogog's left a surface to get back to.

"Yew got a map in yer super little utility belt there bug man?" I'm really starting to hate Jeff's accent now. "Only we canne go forward and we canne go back."

"Shut up Jeff." Tracy says again with Herculean experience.

"No…but maybe we can go down."

Something about the part of the floor I've been standing on for the past twenty minutes felt weird. This is because it's a maintenance hatch. Matt insists on going first. I follow him down the ladder, biting down a yelp as I end up stepping in ankle length ice water (please, please, _please_ be water). I hear something scuttling in the darkness that I know not even Matt can really hear, I concentrate. We may have a way out of here after all.

I haven't used this power much since I got it, and for one very good reason; it's creepy as hell. It's like steeping down a corridor leading to something vast, ancient and deadly. I open my eyes and jerk a thumb over my shoulder.

"The Spiders say that-a-way!"

"The spiders." Matt says flatly.

"Yes."

"That way."

"Yes."

"We're all gonnae die."

"Shut _up_ Jeff!"

---

Somehow we wind up in the sewers and it's a reeking struggle through dark and damp that stretches on longer than reading all three Lord of the rings novels.

"You holding up okay?"

Sometimes on the really bad days the rain or the snow throw off my Spider Sense. Something to do with the changing air pressure I think, but for a guy like me it's just an annoyance. For a guy who's been dependant on his radar since 12 like Matt this, being down here, is one of the few ways he comes halfway close to actually being blind.

"Well enough. Just staying locked on the air currents. Do me a favour and don't have a heart attack or something for the next few hours, your heartbeats are keeping me grounded and backing up my radar."

I hope he hears me smile.

There's a sound that comes from behind us but feels like it's right beside me. Breath. Rags. My wrists tense up…

"Mole people." Matt says quietly. "Leave them be."

I wonder how long they've been following us, if they've been following us at all, and then take his advice. Something about Jeff makes me turn around. He takes his hand out of his jacket. The sounds die behind us. Matt revolves like a solid, angry planet.

"What's in there, Jeff?"

"Nothin'."

No Spider-Sense but my wrists are still singing.

"What is it Jeff?"

"Nothin' you want me at use on you, big man!"

"Give it to me."

"No!"

"Then don't use it. Ever."

Yeah. Just another day in the life of your Friendly Neighbourhood Anger Management Counsellor…

---

More tunnels, more shadows, more pipes and spiders. And then suddenly we're walking on rails. Steam gives way to security lights and the going feel simultaneously easier and impossibly harder.

"Air's stronger up here." Matt starts off following a particular track. The rest of us trudge after him, resenting the fact he's not breathing as hard as the rest of us.

"Yeah, well, we're in the subway. That's not saying much."

Billy giggles behind me.

Miles of tunnel and strange non sounds go by before the light brightens relatively up ahead. We halt, standing in the entrance outside a miscellaneous subway station. A knot in my back I didn't realise I had finally relaxes. I feel like I just arrived at Kennedy Airport with all my luggage actually accounted for. It may be my imagination but this place smells like a good steak. Jeff scratches his beard thoughtfully.

"We keep goin' like this, we could be out in about an hour. Get up to the streets an' find S.H.I.E.L.D or Captain America or somethin'."

"Or," Calvin says ",you can all die right here."

And then his arms burst through his clothes to about the size of I-beams and he slams me and Jeff with about half the weight of a rhino, sending us hurtling back down the tunnel. I flip myself over, reaching out for Jeff, and then as Tracy screams I realise I heard him hit the wall and slam into the track with a sound like a rotten fruit being stepped on.

I slither to a halt, my feet burning with the friction and the ice cold of the water. The force of deceleration thunders through me and out my spine like someone breaking a building over me. Matt comes up alongside me, fists clenched, already shifting his weight to one foot. He tilts his head sideways, frown creasing his brow under the cowl. Calvin's breathing becomes a stalling power motor as his body warps and surges.

"That heartbeat…"

"Do you--like it…Murdock? I…changed--the formula…just for you--"

Calvin grins with stretching lips that bulge and shake as muscle pours into his face like liquid cement. His teeth are stretched way too far apart, massive tombstone slabs exploding out of the gums to fill the gaps.

"Changed--voice…changed--heartbeat…just--for yoooooou!"

There's something stretching with him, under the rags and over the warping muscles…a dirty green overcoat…

And then I realise what's missing.

His moustache.

The bastard shaved off his moustache!

"Hello Devil." the thing that was Calvin Zabbo says in a voice like a thousand garbage cans full of rocks being emptied at once, and takes a step forward. The rails judder under us, and I pull Billy and Tracy behind me as Matt whips out his billy club and twists it over his shoulder and into the nunchuck position.

For all the good it'll do against someone like Mr Hyde.

"Pe--Spidey, get everyone out of here! Now!"

Hyde's one of a hand full of people who could take the Hulk one on one for more than five minutes. Even though Banner's mutation has long since placed the Hulk at a mighty twelve feet tall, leaving Hyde at a measly nine when he's not hunching, he' s still far taller and stronger than me and Matt. And I really don't like the odds of both of us, let alone Matt going solo, taking him on in an already crowded subway tunnel.

And then Matt surprises me because that's what Matt does. He takes a running jump at Hyde, handsprings off his head, then drops behind him and kicks him right in the ass. Hyde pivots, snatching Matt's skull with a hand the size of a monster truck tire, swinging around again to hurl him towards the subway platform. Hyde lunges after him as I spin towards the others: Jeff lying in a compost pile of bruises and meat, Tracy and Billy with the same look of childhood terror in their eyes.

"Stay together! Don't come out whatever you hear!"

As I reach the platform, Hyde rips a metal bench out of the tiles and hurls it at Matt. I settle for a basic summersault as apposed to Matt's cartwheel, firing a line behind me to snag it before it hits the wall and bring it swinging round, adding to the speed, into Hyde's jaw. Something purple (at least I hope it's purple) bursts out but other than more urgent roaring that's the only effect. Matt darts back, leaping up and ramming the end of the club right between Hyde's eyes with a sound like a rhino hitting a wet cow, pushing off his shoulder to avoid the giant backhand.

"I'll break you in two Devil!"

"Hey, there are other people in the room, y'know! And after all the trouble I went to buying myself a new pair of shoes just for you!"

I know it won't hurt him but I still put some extra momentum behind the kick I take at Hyde's jaw, using both feet. They ring like I just hit a greasy, room temperature adamantaium wall as I flip back. Even going flat out I'd probably only wind Hyde. It's nice to have the option not to hold back, there's just not much I can do with it.

Word is Hyde was pushing MGH for a while, maybe long enough to start playing with his old and new toys. Making himself look younger, changing his voice, his damn _heartbeat _to get at Matt…

In the half light of the station it's pretty believable. His skin is a lot more wrinkly and taut this close up, stretched tight over his amped up muscles. His hair is still longer but it hangs in strangled rat tails down what used to be his neck. His eyebrow hair dosen't so much curl as spike, and his eyes are too big, too black and too watery. His nose has been broken, either from the spilt second fight or from the spasms of the transformation.

"She sent me for you Devil! She sent me!"

"I'll have to remember to thank her."

Matt slides between Hyde's legs, leaping up to crack the club off his skull.

"Who's 'She' Hyde? Why the nickname?"

"She, Devil! She of the light!"

I unload a butt load of webbing all over his hands, gumming his arms together with an Atlantic cold nausea in my stomach.

"Whorlogogog?"

"The arachnid finally has something worth saying."

Hyde smiles, and this is the calmest he's been the entire time. He doesn't even bother struggling with the webbing, letting his arms lower to his side. The air seems to turn waxy yellow around him.

"I don't know her name. I don't care. But she comes to me, even now. She makes me know. I _do_ know."

"Know what?" Matt demands, snapping his club out into a bo-staff as I land beside him.

"I know…that she can make me better." Norman Osborn and Eddie Brock wish they could grin as terribly as Hyde is right now. "She can take away all those nasty little problems whirling around in my brain making me do all these awful things. Calvin Zabo will finally be the angel that never was. Leaving Hyde to be the devil that forever is. She can do it, too. She is a goddess. And just like any goddess…"

Hyde snaps the webbing apart, turning that sneer towards the tunnels. I hear the terrified gasp as Tracy clasps Billy close to her.

"…she needs a sacrifice."

We're already sprinting towards him as he leaps across the platform towards them. Matt hurls the staff straight at the back of Hyde's head. It whip cracks off his right temple, sending him off course and crashing through the wall and into the next station. He comes back up roaring, but grows silent, hesitant. I swing my arm out in front of Matt like an iron bar, brining him up short before we reach Hyde as my Spider Sense _screams_. Dust rumbles out of the roof.

"Do you hear her?" Hyde throws his arms wide, staring up in reverence.

I tackle Matt to the side and away from the wall, not sure if I actually yell _**DOWN**_ or if Tracy and Billy just hug into a ball on instinct. The next second, it doesn't matter.

A tidal waveing cyclone of light punches through the ceiling and down onto Hyde, annihilating the wall, vaporizing the tunnels into dust and smoke and rubble. I think Matt says something but my ears are ringing, which is odd because it feels like I don't have any ears left. I force myself to my feet, looking around. A three mile long hole's been broken into the ceiling and down through the tracks. It yawns up at us, stretching miles down into the ancient subways and the sewer tunnels older than that. We landed on the same side of the gap as Billy and Tracey so we managed to avoid being cooked in our costumes. Flames rage all over the stretch where Hyde was standing. Damn near genuflecting.

"Why do I not think that got him?"

"Because it didn't," Matt mumbles, wiping a glove across his mouth. "I can hear him. His brain's fizzing…"

"I'm not liking the sound of that."

"My heart bleeds."

"Poor choice of words."

That's what I mean to say but it comes out as a jabbering little girl half scream as a burning Hyde comes roaring out of the flames, near naked and swinging a burning tree trunk arm at us. Matt lunges forward and then goes sailing back before I can even think about thinking, and then Hyde's over me like a putrid Mt Everest, filling my mouth with the taste of burnt hair. He grins at me and something green, black and toxic dribbles down his chin. He's bitten clean through his lower lip.

I toss what's left of me to the side as his fist comes down, then kick off the ground while it's still quaking, ramming my other foot into the side of his face. I duck down spine grindingly low as he snatches for me, then leap up to ram a haymaker into his face with a sound and feeling of thunder. I grab at his mangled forest of a chest in desperation, not noticing the poisonous sheen until it's too late. I can't stop the scream as vapour trickles out of my fist. His body hair! Like acid!

Hyde grabs me with one elephantine hand and slams me into the wall. The taste of asphalt barely registers and I'm left floating, slumped in a ringing void until Hyde clamps both hands around my throat. Matt's voice roars in as Hyde's putrid potato face globulates back into focus.

"Hyde! Drop him or I promise you, you'll need a different formula just to chew properly!"

Hyde holds me even higher up as he turns to grin at Matt, but dosen't do anything smart like increase the pressure.

"She shall absolve me, Devil! I will be purified, the slate burnt away! Imagine the evil left behind! Imagine all the entirely new kinds of evil and putridness I'll be able to invent when I'm oh so clean!"

"Oh yoo-hoo! Mr grumpy face!"

Hyde turns and I fire a mass of webbing the size of an soccer ball into his face with my free hand. A sound and smell like a Savage Land tyrannosaurus bursts out of his mouth. He drops me hard onto the rails, then kicks me. It's like eating a tank for breakfast. The fact I've sailed clear over the gap only registers when I crash into the rubble, and then it's swept away by new information, like the fact I'm bouncing down the rails as nothing more than a squishy bag of bruised meat. I try and give Billy and Tracy an apologetic look through my lenses. I can still stand but not much else, and I don't have anytime to do anything useful during the attempt.

Matt's running towards us, charging like an Olympic runner, but I know he's not going to make it. I bear him no grudge. He's one of the greatest men I know and I only hope he dosen't spend all his time blaming himself for what may be about to come. Nor Aunt May and MJ. I hope Stark Tower won't be too lonely.

Hyde leaps, hurling himself out over the gap and ramming into the pipes and rubble on the other side, clawing his way up onto solid ground on our side. I force myself onto one knee as he rises above me. Part of the skin around his eyes was torn away when he ripped the webbing off and it's an evil brown purple colour in the sterile daylight. He's foaming and ranting with actual foam, but I can barely hear him over my Spider-Sense.

"Either you or the boy or the Devil! I will be absolved! I shall be Hyde! I! AM! H--"

His left temple opens up in a splash of red. Chunks of yellow glisten and turn in it.

Hyde lets out an animal cry, swivels, and looses his footing. He disappears over the edge without a sound and in a stunned, frozen ten minutes there's a distant but metallic thud far at the bottom. Trails of dust and steam curl out of the hole, and as they dissolve, I realize what I'm looking at.

Jeff, down on one sagging knee, sways on what's left of the platform, holding a smoking gun in unsteady hands.

"Is th'…is th' kid--kid…"

He slumps into the muck. His hands look as cold and hard as the gun and emptier than a plastic bags. Matt's at his side in an instant.

And then all that's left is the roar of chopper blades and the shouting of the medical teams.

---

Manhattan General stinks when it's crowded. They pump up the aesthetic to cover it, but that just mingles with the stench of too many human bodies crammed into too small a space and working too hard. I'm getting a headache watching it all even from here, a tiny island of complete stillness in the million voices and rattle of gurneys.

"Two triple espresso, one 30% cream."

Tony limps up to me, out of armour but a saviour nonetheless. I give him a grateful smile as I roll up my mask and take one of the two cups.

"Thanks. How's the leg?"

"I'll be stuck behind one of my many desks for a couple of weeks. The medics specified twelve but in our line of work…" A bitter smile. We both take a long drink of coffee. "You?"

"Kinda pissed. I had this great lesson plan all worked out and Hyde knocked it clean out of my head. I'm thinking of going back to the tunnels and looking for it but the doc said I wasn't to do anything other than go to the bathroom until they were sure my shoulder blades were still in the same place."

We both take another, longer drink. People are looking at us. The former secretary of defence and his wacky vigilante pal on break.

"So how'd you take her out?"

"Metaphorically." Tony gives me one of those smiles he saves for the photo ops. The one where your not sure if he's enjoying being smarter than you or not. "After the field went down everybody went nuts. Whorlogogog was just about to do her voodoo on Cap when Reed asked her 'Why?'" He shrugs defensively. "Hey, it worked. She started contemplating and solving all this existentential material faster than even her processors could handle. Just before she self imploded, Strange managed to heal up his broken jaw and banish her to whatever's on the other side of the Negative Zone."

I shake my head and then stop because it feels like something is swimming in my brain fluid.

"Gotta love this job sometimes."

"I'll drink to that."

We chink styrofoam. We'd take another drink but two cups are hardly enough for two masters of the demon bean such as ourselves.

"So if Hyde was one of the people cruising on that thing's groovy juice, why was he only freaking out like any other super villain instead of keeling over?"

"Distant cousin. We cross referenced the bodies. The R complexes and the amygdala were either fused or totally removed. We figure all that gunk he pumped into his body messed up his brain enough that all he got was an adrenaline rush that messed with…wherever his sense of right and wrong ended up."

I suddenly wish I had more coffee.

"Yikes."

"Deliberately altering the mutagen to get back at Murdock probably didn't help."

"Daredevil. Who isn't Matt."

Tony smiles apologetically.

"Of course."

I crush the cup between my fingers for something to do, then pull my mask down so I look like slightly less of an idiot. To contradict this I come up with an idea.

"Hey, can you check up on somebody for me?"

"Sure."

I suddenly realise that in the three or so hours I spent with those three people, I know next to nothing about them. I don't know what Billy was doing all on his own. I don't know what we would have done for him when we hit the surface. I don't know where Tracey is now. I don't know what she was doing if she got out of the business. I only know one thing. I'm never going to see either of them again.

"Jeff McCulloch."

Tony's eyes glisten black with the Extremis.

"They just admitted him up at Roosevelt. Room 204."

I raise my soggy brown ball of crap in a short spiritual salute.

"Guess he wasn't so bad after all, or something equally corny and super heroic, right?"

"Him?"

Tony frowns.

"He sells drugs."

---

Did you know Tony has a backdoor into the international crime database?

Well don't tell.

Turns out I busted Jeff back when I was in high school. For drug dealing, although I didn't know it at the time. He's been in and out of the business all his life, long before I ran into him and even after he got his current job. He dosen't have a license for the gun and that's going to come up after he gets out of hospital. Maybe sooner.

But that thing saved a kid. _He _saved a kid.

I do a little checking around. He's got a younger sister, studying law in Edinburgh. Hopes to be procurator fiscal one day…whatever that is.

(Yeah, that is a lot of asking around, and it bugs me I found that last fact out by accident when I stumbled across her MySpace page.)

I do some more checking around after Jarvis dry cleans my costume. I decide to cut out about an hour by looking in on Turk, and dangling him from a fire escape until he tells me Jeff was pretty much everything Tony said he was.

But that he only sold to the 29 and over set. Most of them crooks from one organization or another. Some from lower down his own totem poll.

Nobody from high school or college.

No kids.

What a world, huh?

Logan tipped me off to a mass Nightcrawler's going to be holding up there when he finishes helping the rescue teams cleaning up Madison Avenue tonight. Aunt May and Jarvis are going. I'm considering talking to him, but I know I won't.

Because I know his answers won't be my answers.

At some point God came into this. It didn't _start_ with him but Hesheit came into it. And, as is typical, came questions and standards and uncertainties. But then I forgot all about them. Instantly. I didn't know the answers and I forgot all about the questions and jumped right the hell in.

I knew I was I going to die down there. Maybe. It's not that I never thought about it.

Didn't even think.

A drug dealer didn't even think about shooting a guy in the head to save a kid. A drug dealer with a gun saved a runaway kid in a prostitute's arms.

Most guys would probably be a little lost after all this, unsure where to turn. But I take a flying pumpkin to the face on the way to work everyday, I'll be damned if I let that shake me.

In one unrepeatable but instantly familiar second the world slides into stark, intimate sense. I am not aware of this fact, and maybe that's because I've always known it. What I know now I'll have completely forgotten tomorrow, but as sanguine as I am about the entire thing right now…I can feel the sheer immensity.

Right now I stand on solid ground. But it's made up of people that change all the time.

But it's all I've got.

I look at the sunlight slicing around the crucifix a few blocks away.

_Bring it on._


End file.
